Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been in the global spotlight recently. With world leaders at the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea. Accepting an award from Prince Charles at St James’s Palace. In black tie with Elon Musk at the White House.
But closer to home, he is front and center at the San Francisco Opera for the world premiere of “The Monkey King” — a sweeping, two-hour original opera based on a classic Chinese novel.
Huang and his wife, Lori, who own a home in Pacific Heights, are making a previously unreported donation of $5 million a year for multiple years to the San Francisco Opera. This year’s gift went toward underwriting “The Monkey King”; future ones will sponsor main-stage operas, young artist training, community programming, and digital media initiatives.
Opera director Matthew Shivlock told The Standard the gifts will continue for at least three years, and put the Huangs in the top tier of opera donors, along with just three or four other families.
Shilvock called the gift “a hugely important expression of belief in the arts in San Francisco.”
A transformative gift like this is really a huge vote of confidence in the creative community of the Bay Area — not just at the Opera, but across the entire art sector,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Huang family told The Standard the Huangs were “proud to chair the world premiere of ‘The Monkey King,’ a timeless epic celebrating courage, transformation, and the spirit of adventure with a production that fuses Chinese legend with American creativity.”
“As supporters of the arts and of the Bay Area, the Huang family looks forward to a continued partnership with the Opera, one of San Francisco’s most important arts organizations,” the spokesperson said.
The family is also sponsoring more than 600 tickets for employees and industry leaders to see the show over two nights. Those shows include receptions in the Green Room of the War Veterans Memorial Building — one of which Huang will attend Thursday to announce the family’s donation.
Those events were organized by the Huangs’ daughter, Madison, who is an employee at Nvidia and is managing the family’s relationship with the opera.
The gift marks the second major donation to an arts institution this year from the Huang family. They previously gave $22.5 million to save the California College of Arts from closure. And it comes just as Nvidia finalizes its first office lease in San Francisco, with a whopping 45,000 square feet in Mission Rock.
Huang’s involvement in city affairs has been more prominent recently, even as his star rises nationally. He made headlines last month after President Donald Trump cited him as one of two tech CEOs who personally convinced him not to send the National Guard into the city.
Huang’s collaboration with the SF Opera started when Maryam Muduroglu, the former head of protocol for San Francisco, mentioned “The Monkey King” world premiere to him in passing. Muduroglu, who worked with Huang on the 2023 APEC Summit in San Francisco, said Huang seemed “really excited that the San Francisco Opera was doing something like this, touching deep into Asian culture.”
Shilvock then reached out to the Huangs and asked them to serve as ambassadors for the show to raise awareness and philanthropic support. Shortly after Huang signed on, fellow tech CEOs Chris Larsen of Ripple and Jerry Yang of Yahoo joined him on the honorary committee.
Muduroglu said that beyond money, Huang’s participation was vital in bringing in members of the tech community, with whom the opera has long sought to cultivate an audience.
“Jensen and Lori becoming honorary chairs for ‘The Monkey King’ just opened up a whole other set of conversations and excitement for the opera itself,” she said.
“The Monkey King,” by composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang, is based on the classic Ming Dynasty novel “Journey to the West” and is performed in English and Mandarin. It was commissioned by San Francisco Opera in partnership with the Chinese Heritage Foundation of Minnesota.
The show has received rave reviews; The New York Times (opens in new tab)called it “spectacular” and “a jaw-dropping feat of music theater.”